Wait till he learns about aider
I use both for different tasks, Aider is a sharp knife and claude code more of a blunt instrument.
My experience with Claude Code after two weeks of adventures
151–160 of 388 posts
Re: My experience with Claude Code after two weeks of adventures
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
Something really feels off about the whole thing. I use Claude code. I like it, it definitely saves me time reading docs or looking on stack overflow. It’s a phenomenal tool. If we are to believe the hype though, shouldn’t these tools be launching software into the stratosphere? Like the CEO of stripe said AI tools provide a x100 increase in productivity. That was 3-4months ago. Shouldn’t stripe be launching rockets…
Code is not the bottleneck.
> Code is not the bottleneck.
Understanding the problem to solve is.
Re: My experience with Claude Code after two weeks of adventures
#153There must at this point be lots and lots of actual walkthroughs of people coding using Claude Code, or whatever, and producing real world apps or libraries with them right? Would be neat to have a list because this is what I want to read (or watch), rather than people just continuously telling me all this is amazing but not showing me it’s amazing.
Something really feels off about the whole thing. I use Claude code. I like it, it definitely saves me time reading docs or looking on stack overflow. It’s a phenomenal tool. If we are to believe the hype though, shouldn’t these tools be launching software into the stratosphere? Like the CEO of stripe said AI tools provide a x100 increase in productivity. That was 3-4months ago. Shouldn’t stripe be launching rockets…
Perhaps the hype is not intended for developer consumption, even though often worded as if it were, but instead meant for investors (such as VC's).
Re: My experience with Claude Code after two weeks of adventures
#154Claude Code is hard to describe. It’s almost like I changed jobs when I started using it. I’ve been all-in with Claude as a workflow tool, but this is literally steroids. If you haven’t tried it, I can’t recommend it enough. It’s the first time it really does feel like working with a junior engineer to me.
Just got it at work today and it’s a dramatic step change beyond Cursor despite using the same foundation models. Very surprising! There was a task a month ago where AI assistance was a big net negative. Did the same thing today w/ Claude Code in 20ish minutes. And for Much less context babysitting too. Claude code is really good at finding the things it needs and adding them to its context. I find Cursor’s agent mod…
Even though it’s the same model cursor adds a massive system prompt to every request. And it’s shit and lobotomises the models. After the rug pull I’m exclusive Claude code at the end of my billing period or when cursor cut me off the $60 a month plan—-which will probably come first—-a bit over halfway into my month.
Re: My experience with Claude Code after two weeks of adventures
#155Can someone offer me some help? I've just been messing about "vibe coding" little python apps with local llm, continue and vscode. And I got so far with it.
Then I found the free tier of claude so I fed in the "works so far" version with the changes that the local llm made, and it fixed and updated all the issues (with clear explanation) in one go. Success!
So my next level attempt was to get all the spec and prompts for a new project (a simple manic miner style 2d game using pygame). 8 used chat gpt to craft all this and it looked sensible to me with appropriate constraints for different parts of the projrct.
Which claude created. But it keeps referring to a method which it says is not present in the code and that I'm running the wrong version. (I'm definitely not). I've tried indicating it by reference to the line number and the surrounding code but it's just gas lighting me.
Any ideas how to progress from this? I'm not expecting perfection, but it seems it's just taken me to a higher level before it runs into essentially the same issue as the local llm.
All advice appreciated, I'm just dabbling with this four a bit of fun when I can (I'm pretty unwell so do things as and when I feel up to it)
Thanks in advance.
Re: My experience with Claude Code after two weeks of adventures
#156Claude Code is hard to describe. It’s almost like I changed jobs when I started using it. I’ve been all-in with Claude as a workflow tool, but this is literally steroids. If you haven’t tried it, I can’t recommend it enough. It’s the first time it really does feel like working with a junior engineer to me.
I found cursor much better than Claude Code. Running Claude code it did so many commands and internal prompting to get a small thing done and ate up tonnes of my quota. Cursor on the other hand did it super quick and straight to the point. Claude code just got stuck in grep hell
Re: My experience with Claude Code after two weeks of adventures
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
Oh do let me tell you how much effort I put into tending my non-deterministic garden or relationships or hell even the contractors I am using to renovate my house! A few small markdown documents and putting in the time to understand something interesting hardly seems a steep price!
The contractors working on my house sometimes paint a room bright pink for no particular reason. When I point that out, they profusely apologize and say that of course the walls must be white and wonder why they even got the idea of making them pink in the first place. Odd, but nice fellows otherwise. It feels like they’re 10x more productive than other contractors.
Also, they paint the whole room for $2.41! When you add that critical detail the analogy comes into focus.
People aren't excited about AI coding because it's so much better than human coders. They're excited because it's within spitting distance while rounding down to free.
Re: My experience with Claude Code after two weeks of adventures
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
to continue on this, I wouldn't let claude or any agent actually create a project structure, i'd guide it in the custom system prompt. and then in each of the folders continue to have specific prompts for what you expect the assets to be coded like, and common behavior, libraries, etc....
So you've invented writing out a full business logic spec again. btw, I'm not throwing shade. I personally think upfront design through a large lumbering document is actually a good way to develop stuff. As you either do it upfront, or through endless iterations in sprints for years.
The problem with waterfall wasn't the full business spec, it was that people wrote the spec once and didn't revise it when reality pushed back.
Re: My experience with Claude Code after two weeks of adventures
#159Can someone offer me some help? I've just been messing about "vibe coding" little python apps with local llm, continue and vscode. And I got so far with it. Then I found the free tier of claude so I fed in the "works so far" version with the changes that the local llm made, and it fixed and updated all the issues (with clear explanation) in one go. Success! So my next level attempt was to get all the spec and prompts…
It's likely you're running into "too deep into mediocre code with unclear interfaces and a lot of hidden assumptions hell" that LLMs are generally poor at handling. If you're running into an inextricable wall then it's better to do a controlled demolition.
ie, take everything written by chatgpt and have the highest-quality model you have summarize what the game does, and break down all the features in depth.
Then, take that document and feed it into claude. It may take a few iterations but the code you get will be much better than your attempt on iterating on the existing code.
Claude will likely zero-shot a better application or, at least, one that it can improve on itself.
If claude still insists on making up new features then install the context7 MCP server and ask it to use context7 when working on your request.
Re: My experience with Claude Code after two weeks of adventures
#160There must at this point be lots and lots of actual walkthroughs of people coding using Claude Code, or whatever, and producing real world apps or libraries with them right? Would be neat to have a list because this is what I want to read (or watch), rather than people just continuously telling me all this is amazing but not showing me it’s amazing.
Something really feels off about the whole thing. I use Claude code. I like it, it definitely saves me time reading docs or looking on stack overflow. It’s a phenomenal tool. If we are to believe the hype though, shouldn’t these tools be launching software into the stratosphere? Like the CEO of stripe said AI tools provide a x100 increase in productivity. That was 3-4months ago. Shouldn’t stripe be launching rockets…
Despite living in an age of supposedly transformative brainstorming and creative technologies, we’re also paradoxically inhabiting a time with less creativity and vision than ever. :)